Write On! – Saying Goodbye is Always Hard: Discontinuing Products

Nothing is safe from obsolescence. That may sound like a dour statement, but it's basically just a rephrasing of "everything comes to an end". That's true of most things in life whether that's a hit television show or a line of products, eventually there is an ending. The health of a company can depend on knowing when to invest in revitalizing a product versus when to allow the curtain to fall on that product. We take this very seriously. It's an integral part of our planning process, and something we discuss almost every quarter. When we sit down to evaluate each product in our catalog, one part of the process is dedicated to potential improvements or re-engineering and another part is dedicated to discontinuing products. Then again, there are a variety of reasons products get discontinued and sometimes a product doesn't even reach one of our quarterly meetings before it gets the proverbial axe.

You might be asking, why talk about this now or ever for that matter, and the answer is that we get asked about it far more frequently than we ever thought we would. We used to get asked more about what new designs we were dreaming up or what possible "refreshes" we had in store for a specific pen model. Over time, questions about what products might be going away moved to the forefront of the questions we receive. This is probably due to the fact that we've now discontinued several products and in the process, had to talk about why those products got discontinued. Let's talk about those products in an effort to illustrate the different reasons we might discontinue a product.

One of our original products that we manufactured as a direct-to-consumer product was a machined iPhone case. It was extremely popular from 2010-2012, and we ended up with a few iterations, multiple configurations, and several different material and finish options. We initially released cases designed to fit the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s and our case design was adapted between the two in order to make changes that allowed for less "antenna" disruption. With the impending release of the iPhone 5, we realized we would have to change quite a bit of our process because the dimensions of the product were changing. They were changing just a little bit, but in the world of tooling, machining, and molded parts those tiny changes were massive. All of our programs would need to be changed, we'd need new molds for the plastic parts, and our custom machined setups would need to be remade. The time that would have taken was exponential, and we didn't think we would be ready to launch when that phone hit the market. I think we ended up making a small run of iPhone 5 cases before the decision was made to discontinue support for future Apple products. At the time, we didn't know if this was a wise decision or not, however, as time has gone on Apple has continued to change the dimensions of their products between releases, and the market has been flooded with mass-produced metal cases at extremely low prices. Looking back, this was the push we needed to look at making other products, and without it we might not have even tried our hands at making pens.

Fast forward to the fateful release of the Reaktor line of pens, and a disaster of a different kind altogether. After more than a year of design and prototyping, we had sourced fresh material for these pens even though changes in the market had driven up the price of aluminum bar stock quite a bit. We'd also recently expanded our machines to include multiple Swiss-style machining centers and a Swiss lathe, which promised to dramatically reduce machining time while improving the finished product. Those additions would allow us to release the Reaktor line at a significantly lower price, making it a viable budget pen. Our material arrived, we went into full production mode, cranked off almost 5,000 pens, and then sent those pens out for anodize. When the pens came back, we were introduced to a problem that was rampant in the machining world, but we were completely unaware of. Cold-forged aluminum from a specific mill had been sent out to numerous industries and when the finished material was sand-blasted, anodized, or acid treated, huge voids and pitting were revealed. We were one of the smallest manufacturers to have issues, huge automotive, aerospace, and military machining companies ran into the same issue. The mill that made the aluminum refused to do anything about it, and we were left with a major decision. How could we proceed with recouping our investment into the Reaktor line when less than half the pens were salvageable? Not only that, we wouldn't even know what pens were good until we sent them out for anodize. The mounting cost of the project pushed us to release as much viable product as we could, but we were months behind schedule. Review pens had to be resent and the reviewers didn't really know what our plan was or how to proceed with the product. Over half the batch of raw material was still sitting on our shelves, and we were forced to move on to machining other existing pens. In the end, we could only salvage about 30% of the initial batch of pens that were machined, and ended up scrapping half of the raw material. The loss in product, time, and revenue was big but the nail in the coffin was another increase in price for aluminum stock. There was no way we could machine the Reaktor pen for less than any of our other models, meaning it was no longer a viable budget or entry level pen. Shortly after the increase in material price, we made the decision to discontinue the product until we could potentially redesign it, and re-release it as a completely different pen design.

The K Series pens are the most recent addition to our discontinued products, though it might not seem like it since we're continuing to release multiple Render K pens. As a whole, capped pens are not nearly as popular as retractable pens, and when people do end up buying a capped pen, they inevitably want a larger pen that's a fountain pen with a larger nib (overall size not tip size). The Fountain K was never close to being as popular as the INK fountain pen and has paled in comparison to the sales of the Vertex. Even the Decograph is a more popular capped pen than the Fountain K thought most people like the Fountain K style more than the Decograph. The Render K was popular for a time, and that time was before the popularization of the machined, metal click or bolt-action pen. As time has gone on, the cost of machining the K Series has not decreased, but the pen itself does not support that investment of cash flow to keep it on the shelves. We've used our other models to "subsidize" the K series because it was our first pen. It's the original pen that started everything, but even nostalgia can't keep it alive forever. Ultimately, we were forced to make the decision to discontinue the K Series because it was just not a viable pen option any longer. Unfortunately, our final batch of K Series pens was finished shortly before we made this decision, so we have a lot of aluminum pens available, but we're making the best of it by trying out new Cerakote finishes on the K Series pens, and the ones that prove to be very popular move to our other models. So far, it seems like this has been a pretty big hit, though we expect the K Series to be completely sold through before the end of 2025.

Those are three of the reasons we discontinue products, and it's possible we'll find more reasons in the future. During our most recent meeting where we talked about discontinuing products, we finalize the decision to discontinue the Retraktable mechanical pencil, and though we discussed discontinuing the Retrakt, ultimately we decided to do a design refresh and rebranding on that pen before we officially discontinued it. The Retrakt is still one of the most popular pens when it comes to bulk gifts for corporations, groomsman gifts, or other branding opportunities likely because it is a "normal" click pen. That's one reason it avoided being discontinued and will likely avoid it in the future.

It's never easy to make the decision to move on from a design or product, but it can be a bigger problem if you wait too long. Sometimes, we made the decision right on time, other times we waited too long. The hardest part of the process is knowing when to make the decision to discontinue a product, it's one of the reasons we talk about our product viability as often as we do. And even if we discontinue a product, that doesn't mean it's gone forever. We discuss bringing products back, like the Speedster, almost as frequently. Maybe one of your favorite products has been discontinued, if that's the case send us an email or a note about that product and we can give you an update on it. You never know, we might decide to bring something back from the museum if we get enough people that really want us to resurrect it.